Beaten Gold, is gold beaten with a hammer into exceeding thin leaves, so that it is computed, that an ounce may be beaten into sixteen hundred leaves, each three inches square, in which state it takes up more than 1500 times its former surface.

This gold they beat on a block of black marble, about a foot square, and usually raised three feet high: they make use of three sorts of hammers, formed like mallets, of polished iron: the first, which weighs three or four pounds, serves to chase, or drive; the second, of eleven or twelve pounds, to close; and the third, which weighs fourteen or fifteen pounds, to stretch and finish. They also make use of four moulds of different sizes, viz. two of vellum, the smallest whereof consists of forty or fifty leaves, and the larger of two hundred; the other two, consisting each of five hundred leaves, are made of bullocks guts well scoured, and prepared. See Mould.

Method of preparing and beating Gold. They first melt a quantity of pure gold, and form it into an ingot: this they reduce, by forging, into a plate about the thickness of a sheet of paper; which done, they cut the plate into little pieces about an inch square, and lay them in the first or smallest mould to begin to stretch them: after they have been hammered here a while with the smallest hammer, they cut each of them into four, and put them into the second mould, to be extended further.

Upon taking them hence, they cut them again into four, and put them into the third mould; out of which they are taken, divided into four, as before, and laid in the last, or finishing mould, where they are beaten to the degree of thinness required.

The leaves thus finished, they take them out of the mould, and dispose them into little paper-books, prepared with a little red bole, for the gold to stick to; each book ordinarily contains twenty-five gold leaves. There are two sizes of these books; twenty-five leaves of the smallest only weigh five or six grains, and the same number of the largest nine or ten grains.

It must be observed, that gold is beaten more or less, according to the kind or quality of the work it is intended for; that for the gold-wire drawers to gild their ingots withal, is left much thicker than that for gilding the frames of pictures, &c. withal. See Gilding.

Gold-finch, in ornithology. See Fringilla.

Goldsmith, or, as some choose to express it, silversmith, an artist who makes vessels, utensils, and ornaments, in gold and silver.

The goldsmith's work is either performed in the mould, or beat out with the hammer or other engine. All works that have raised figures, are cast in a mould, and afterwards polished and finished: plates, or dishes, of silver or gold, are beat out from thin flat plates; and tankards, and other vessels of that kind, are formed of plates soldered together, and their mouldings are beat, not cast. The business of the goldsmiths formerly required much more labour than it does at present; for they were obliged to hammer the metal from the ingot to the thinness they wanted: but there are now invented flattening-mills, which reduce metals to the thinness that is required, at a very small expense. The goldsmith is to make his own moulds, and for that reason ought to be a good designer, and have a taste in sculpture: he also ought to know enough of metallurgy, to be able to assay mixed metals, and to mix the alloy.

Golden, something that has a relation to gold, or consists of gold.

Golden number. See Astronomy, p. 492.

Golden rule. See Arithmetick, p. 381.

Goldingen, a city of Poland, in the duchy of Courland, sixty miles west of Mitau: E. long. 22°, N. lat. 57°.